HYDERABAD: Kadali Sathyanarayana grew up in a house seeped in literature. Being the daughter of a writer, reading and writing have been lifelong habits for the 23-year-old. However, it was the death of her grandfather that make her seek writing as a therapy. The result is ‘Letters to Love’, a collection of 40 letters in Telugu. She added her grandfather’s name ‘Sathyanarayana’ to hers after he passed away.
The book was launched recently in the city which had former actress Renu Desai, and feminist writers P Sathyavati and Aparna Thota in attendance.
“All the letters are written from the perspective of women. They talk about love, nature, infatuation etc. They examine love as seen by women from different age groups in different situations. My inspiration is well-known Telugu feminist writer Gudipati Venkata Chalam, who started Lekha Sahityam,” says the writer, who has studied English literature.
“The letters deal with certain questions that women face in their quest for love – should I make the first move? should I tell him first? After my grandfather’s death, I started meeting women from different age groups, and found that their journeys in love have similar characteristics. Each letter in the book is a story,” says Kadali.
Talking about her journey to get published, she says: “I struggled for seven months before Vandana Bandaru, Venkat Siddareddy and Mahy Bezwada of Anvikshiki Publishers came to my rescue. Prashanth Chevendra has worked on the illustrations for the book. The first letter that I wrote was an experimental one, and I put it up on Facebook. I was surprised by the tremendous response I received, and a few well-known writers suggested that I should write an entire collection,” shares Kadali, who wrote the collection in an year.
Explaining why she writes in Telugu, she says, “Telugu is in every cell of my body, it is in my blood. Writing is living for me, and writing in Telugu is like living in comfort. However, my third book is going to be in English.” The 137-page book is already among the top 10 Telugu bestsellers on Amazon.
— Kakoli Mukherjee
kakoli_mukherjee@newindianexpress.com
@KakoliMukherje2